


Truer North

by Ericine



Series: Lush [7]
Category: Star Trek: The Next Generation
Genre: (sort of), Alaska, Doctor/Patient, Empathy, Fluff, Herbalism, Hurt/Comfort, Love, Multi, Secret Relationship, Sickfic, basically they're really cute ok, kind of
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-25
Updated: 2017-12-25
Packaged: 2019-02-20 12:08:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,762
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13146393
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ericine/pseuds/Ericine
Summary: Will's got a bit of a flu, but Deanna and Beverly have it covered.





	Truer North

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Leyenn](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Leyenn/gifts).



> For Leyenn, who is sick on Christmas! :( A lil hastily-written thing I conceived of on the train today to hopefully cheer you up? Get well soon!

The first time Will had taken Deanna to Earth as his  _ imzadi _ , he’d asked where she’d wanted to go. It was a fair enough question; Deanna had certainly been to Earth before and, as he saw it, was completely entitled to choose between what she knew and something new.

She’d split the difference: she asked him to take her home.

He’d bristled then, and maybe she shouldn’t have let a combination of curiosity and new love get to her, but she’d just wanted to understand him, to know all of him. He’d already let her into his mind at that point, let her spread out and make herself at home around his curves and edges, but some things just require context.

She almost laughed the first time she saw the middle of Alaska in the dead of winter. It would make sense, she’d tried to explain between guffaws, that he’d be from somewhere so unlike what she called home.

_ It’s not like I really think of this as home either _ , he’d told her honestly, and later that night, cocooned in his arms, she’d seen the aurora through the ceiling window - frigid and majestic and vivid. Even with the connection they shared, she couldn’t express what it meant to her to see that, to see that with  _ him _ .

It was maybe a year later when she’d known their connection enough to express it to her liking, and he’d made love to her so slowly and deliberately that she nearly wept.

She doesn’t express that to him now, just keeps the feeling in her mind as she touches his hot forehead on the Sickbay bed and looks up at Beverly with controlled concern. “If it’s really not that serious, you should at least be able to treat the symptoms, right?”

Beverly’s mind bubbles worry underneath the surface like boiling water, but, to her credit, her surface emotions lie calm. When she speaks, Deanna’s willing to bet that a non-empath would just view her as an earnest and caring physician, not someone addressing both of her lovers in a professional context.

“Dealing with gravitational fluctuations can be an uncertain science - we can’t always predict the way that someone will act, a lot like we can’t predict exactly what will happen when we eat a new food for the first time. That’s the facet of the fever that makes this a little unpredictable. We’ve done basic treatments for all symptoms, but we’re going to hold off on doing anything too specialized, because it might affect the other symptoms.”

Will blinks a little into the light, which has already been turned down fifty percent. “So, what you’re saying is that I have to ride it out.”

Beverly reaches out and takes his hand. It’s quick, nothing different from the way that she touches her other patients - reassuring, never overstepping her bounds - but there’s a surge of love behind it that makes Deanna flash her a grateful smile. “Yes,” she says, firm but kind. “You’re off duty for the next two days - we’ll see how you feel after that. Get some rest. Have someone sit with you to help you with anything you need. I’ve sent replicator instructions with a slightly modified nutrition plan to make sure your body’s getting what it needs right now.”

Will closes his eyes. "Remember when zero gravity was _normal_ for space travel? Now, we can barely handle it."

On the inside, Deanna’s buzzing with purpose, but Selar and Alyssa are somewhere in this room watching this whole scene play out with kind interest. She nods, looking thoughtful. “We can take shifts. I can stay with him now. I’m sure we can work something out for when I’m on duty.”

Beverly smiles, doubly reassuring in both sight and feeling. “You’ll be fine, Will. It’s just one of those things that I’m not completely comfortable patching up right on the spot.”

Will manages a lopsided grin. “Well, you’re the best. I wouldn’t pick anyone else to have on my side. Besides, it’ll be good for my character.”

Beverly smiles and squeezes his hand again. “Speaking of shifts, mine’s just about up. I think I’ll file my log from home tonight.”

Deanna feels Alyssa’s lips turn up as clearly as if the nurse had been standing in front of her, not behind her and through an observation glass. “We’ll call you if we need anything.”

* * *

Will sits up slowly in Deanna’s bed, turns his head from side to side, and holds out an arm like he’s testing the wind. It’s fuzzy in here.

It’s  _ fuzzy _ in here. Right? Everything looks a little too bright and a little too blurred.

“Hot?” asks Beverly. They’ve all changed into lounge clothes, ready for a night of care. She sets down the tray of food she’s holding and slides onto the bed beside him. Her skin is cool to his touch; Deanna’s is hot, though not feeling nearly as hot as usual. Between the two of them, they’ve been able to provide some temporary relief from his fluctuating temperature.

Will leans into her cool shoulder, the thin strap of her scarlet Antosian silk top brushing his cheek. “I feel like I’m floating,” he admits.

She hums, a sound that combines concern with purpose. Her shoulder slips from his face for a moment, and he whimpers a sound of protest that doesn’t quite achieve its goal. Then, her shoulder’s back, and she’s pressing something cool and tingly to his face. It smells like Deanna’s hair.

Or one of her hair scents. She has so many.

“This should help a little,” Beverly murmurs, and she strokes his cheek so tenderly that Will finds himself wishing that he could burrow into that feeling. “You need water. Do you feel any pain?”

“No,” he manages to get out, before he feels a cup placed to his lips. He drinks a little first, then more greedily. How hadn’t he realized how thirsty he was?

He hears the familiar chirp of a tricorder scan, then opens his eyes to see Deanna hovering in front of him, also wearing her silks.

“Electrolytes are falling just a little bit low, Deanna - I think we can go with the soda pack. The mint one?”

The cup comes back, and he drinks again - a little sweet, a little salty. The whole thing requires a little too much effort on his part, and he lowers himself, a little dizzy, back onto the pillows. “You both are a dream,” he says quietly, and he’s not sure if he says it out loud or not, but both women giggle, and that’s how he knows.

Two pairs of lips on his forehead - one cool, one cooler. He really must have a fever, if Deanna’s feeling cold to him.’

“You’re the dream,  _ ithái _ ,” Beverly murmurs softly, as Deanna whispers warm and comforting thoughts into his head. “Sick or well. Preferably well, of course.”

Will laughs at that. The concept of a time existing when he didn’t feel like he was levitating unevenly in bed feels so foreign to him right now. His skin is cooling, though, enough to where he feels like he can sleep because it’s comforting, not because he just needs the buzzing in his body to still. “What’d ya put o’my face?” he slurs a little.

“Howard family secret,” Beverly answers. He feels, rather than hears Deanna’s surprise, but maybe it was visible on her face, because Beverly adds on: “Vulcan mint, menthol, lavender, and just a little bit of rose.”

“Hair,” says Will decidedly, and Deanna’s hand strokes his arm lightly.

“It does smell a bit like my hair.”  _ Sleep, imzadi. Sleep for us? _   


He obeys.

* * *

Beverly opens her eyes blearily when she feels the bed jerk. It’s Deanna, standing, pulling the covers off Will.

“He felt hot,” she explains quietly, when she meets Beverly’s eyes. “It woke me up.”

Will sprawls on the bed, hardly conscious, but Beverly feels her body protest the moment she moves; she’s fallen asleep kneeling on the floor with her head on the mattress. Judging by how Deanna looks, Beverly’s willing to believe she did the same thing.

She doesn’t need a tricorder to tell her what’s happening now. “The fever’s breaking.” She stands, feeling her limbs simultaneously protest and welcome their unfolding, and takes a little more of her herbal paste from the bedside table. “A little bit behind his ears should help just enough.”

“What’s left for recovery, then?” Deanna asks, pulling her sweater a little more tightly around herself as she crosses to the other side to pull those covers off. “A lot of sleep?” Beverly nods. “Oh, good.”

There’s not really room for her in the bed right now (meaning that there’s room for one other person in bed with Will but not all three of them), so she takes the free pillow and sinks to the floor back on the opposite side of the bed. “I know I shouldn’t have been worried, but, I don’t know, you never know with these nonroutine sicknesses, you know?”

Beverly caps the herbs and kneels on the floor on the other side, resting her head on the mattress. “Oh, believe me, I know. Wesley would get sick as a child, and you know, doctor, right? So you’d think I’d be less worried. I still would stay up all night with him on the occasion he came down with something. Sometimes Jack would be away, and it would just be me…” She trails off and take Will’s warm hand lightly in hers. He stirs but doesn’t wake up.

Deanna reaches across the bed until Beverly takes her hand. “Well, we make a good team, you and I.”

A wave of exhaustion hits Beverly then, like all of her muscles drop half a centimeter and her eyelids double in weight. She meets Deanna’s eyes, knowing that she had to have felt it too. “We’ve slept two people just fine on the couch before.”

Deanna slides her hand into Will’s tiredly, completing their circle. “We’ll go in a minute,” she says.

A pause.

“Beverly?”

“Deanna?”

“Have you ever seen the northern lights on Earth?”

“I...no, I don’t believe I have. Why?”

Deanna squeezes her hand. “Just curious.”

* * *

When they speak about it later, no one - sick or well - has a _great_ recollection of what happened that night, but at some point, Will wakes up and pulls them into bed with him. He manages a shower at some point. They sleep, and a week later, they somehow have plans to go on shore leave to Alaska.


End file.
